Help me get into Photography
LostNinja
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Registered User regular
So some recent life changes have left me in need of a hobby that will get me out and, at least occasionally, around people. I think photography fits that bill and it’s something I’ve been interested in for a while. I also moved almost a year ago and am now near a lake and a couple parks that I haven’t explored that may be fun to do so with a camera. An outdoor shopping area nearby regularly has events like concerts on the green and art shows that’d also be fun to take pictures at. Those are the main things I think I’d be interested in photographing, scenery/nature (with the occasional wildlife shot) and events. Also portraits, but I feel like that may be a weird space for a hobbiest.
So my questions are;
1. Camera
I read through this thread and, for someone with no experience beyond using a phone to take non-artistic photos, would the Nikon D7500 suit my needs? Should I go for something cheaper like the D5600? Something else?
2. Learning to do the thing
Are there any online classes/blogs/etc. that you would recommend to teach me the basics like camera settings, photo composition, reading light, editing, etc.(again we are talking zero experience)
Briefly looking online, I wasn’t seeing any classes that would be easily accessible for me while working a full time job. Is there a way I should be searching for things like workshops?
3. Editing software
Half the fun for me will be editing the pictures. Is there any specific software I should be looking into that preferably doesn’t have a high monthly fee (adobe creative cloud appears to be $53/month!).
I’m in the market for a new tablet or computer soon do I need to keep this in mind, are there certain specs I should be looking for?
Thanks in advance H/A!
So my questions are;
1. Camera
I read through this thread and, for someone with no experience beyond using a phone to take non-artistic photos, would the Nikon D7500 suit my needs? Should I go for something cheaper like the D5600? Something else?
2. Learning to do the thing
Are there any online classes/blogs/etc. that you would recommend to teach me the basics like camera settings, photo composition, reading light, editing, etc.(again we are talking zero experience)
Briefly looking online, I wasn’t seeing any classes that would be easily accessible for me while working a full time job. Is there a way I should be searching for things like workshops?
3. Editing software
Half the fun for me will be editing the pictures. Is there any specific software I should be looking into that preferably doesn’t have a high monthly fee (adobe creative cloud appears to be $53/month!).
I’m in the market for a new tablet or computer soon do I need to keep this in mind, are there certain specs I should be looking for?
Thanks in advance H/A!
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Check with your library to see if they have a partnership with Udemy or Lynda or some other online learning place. There are a few classes on both places. Also library may have some books that are worth perusing as well.
Unfortunately no, I don’t know anyone else into photography personally.
If you do go with an APS-C sensor, I strongly suggest getting an 18-300mm stabilized lens assuming it's a native lens and it's a well-made native (e.g. Nikon's. IIRC Canon's is also solid). This thing can do basically everything except low light. For the most part I may as well just leave my other lenses at home for the amount I've been using them.
Skylum Luminar does have library functionality, but so far the library seems pretty tacked on. It also has crashed on me a couple times, where Affinity Photo has been solid. I also haven't had as much luck getting it to do the image processing I want, but I also haven't used it much.
For your own privacy, consider stripping all exif data when you export to jpg. There are tools that will let you be more strategic about it (e.g. leave the lens, focal length, etc. information) but you probably don't want a timestamp, GPS location, and camera serial number attached to your photos that are out in the wild.
1) I wanted weather sealing. That automatically pushed me into the higher end prosumer bracket for everything except Pentax
2) I wanted a physical external trigger and preferred to have a microphone plug just in case. Ditto.
3) I'd been reading really good things about Nikon glass, so I automatically preferred Nikon, all else being equal.
If you don't need weather sealing, a D3500 would be just fine if you want to stick with Nikon. Canon also is very good (and supposedly has a better UI), and Sony may not have the best lenses but it seems like nobody else can touch their mirrorless cameras (edit: and just because their lenses aren't best in class doesn't mean they aren't very very good). I didn't look too much further afield than those three in the APS-C and full frame form factors.
So start with what kinds of photography you want to do, what your budget is, and the decision tree will likely start narrowing from there.
I can say that each day of shooting results in around 30 gigs of raws for me (around 1000 photos) which I then slowly cull through and edit. Affinity Photo’s intermediate saves turn a 20 meg raw into a 500 meg file. Final exported jpegs are 1-5 megs, so do the appropriate math.
If I’m looking at Cannon’s is there a comparable model I should be looking at to the D3500/D5600? The Rebel series looks to be it.
Cameras, get the best you can afford without going nuts.
I like bhphotovideo.com but shop around for deals.
The recommendation I've read is that you should spend the bulk of your money on your lenses--camera bodies fall behind rather quickly, while lenses will last for years, if not decades. So if you plan to get more than the kit lens, keep that in mind when you're buying the body.
Canon's Rebel series is the equivalent of the D3500/D5600. They do very good work with their DSLRs. From my reading you pretty much can't go wrong with any of Canon, Nikon, or Sony for the APS-C format sensor cameras--the important decisions center around form factor, price, and ergonomics, along with a handful of lenses.
Differentiators:
If you want the flexibility of the 18-300mm native zoom lens, Nikon is the only game in town. Canon has an 18-200mm--and in all likelyhood that would be just fine. While I use the full range of my super zoom on a regular basis, given the ridiculous 21 megapixel resolution of the D7500 sensor, I could just crop to get that kind of zoom anyway in all but a few cases. There are third party lenses that will do it (Sigma and Tamron both make one), but I can't speak to their performance. And of course there's no guarantees third party lenses will work on the next camera you buy, even if it's by the same company. tl;dr: I like the 18-300mm superzoom, but I admit I could easily get by without it.
IIRC Canon had the widest of wide angle native lenses available with incredible quality, so if that's important to you, you should go Canon. HOWEVER, as I recall, their 70-300mm kit lens is garbage and you want to avoid it (probably should check up on that statement, it's been a month and a half since I looked and I forget if that was for the full frame or the crop sensor).
Sony is the only one that makes cameras that can operate in true silent mode--which can be important if you're taking pictures around people and want to be less obtrusive. The clack of the shutter is surprisingly loud on my D7500, especially if I'm shooting an exposure-bracketed 5-shot burst. edit: which is basically all I do these days. edit: Sony however has a limited native lens selection, unlike Canon and Nikon.
More computer recommendations:
For a computer I strongly suggest at least 32 gigs of RAM and an SSD (NVME if you can swing it) for processing, and one of those 4+ TB HDDs for long term storage. I'm regularly hitting 50 gigs allocated of my 64, and when I'm writing a 500 megabyte processed file to disk, the throughput of NVME helps. Similarly, at 30 gigs per outting, a 1 TB NVME drive isn't going to last very long, so it's nice to have a 10 TB monster to store to (Western Digital seems to put external 10 TB drives on sale for ~$160 every couple weeks). But like I said, check out the PC Build Thread and they can help spec a computer that will fit your budget. Be warned, like with the cameras, the suggestions will inevitably include recommendations to stretch your budget to the next tier of...whatever it is. Plan accordingly, and set a hard line if you have to.
Accessories you may want to consider:
* UV filters for your lenses (for protection, not for the filtering, which is no longer necessary). Circular polarizers and neutral density filters may also be fun but are less important. I already managed to slap a nice big thumbprint on my lens one time, but since I had the UV filter in place, I didn't need to worry about it.
* A strap. Yes really. The aftermarket strap I bought holds the camera in a more natural manner and is comfortable for longer than the one that came with the camera. As well as not being emblazoned in neon yellow with "NIKON".
* One or two large (32 gig+) SD cards, the fastest you can get your hands on that your camera supports. I went with 128 gigs and haven't had to worry about running out of space. I do need a second SD card since I've almost left the house with the SD card sitting in my computer. Whoops.
* A card reader for the above so you can take advantage of that speed when you're pulling photos back to your computer
* A cleaning kit. A basic $15 one will probably be fine. I just went with the Amazon Basics one.
* A hot shoe cover (if applicable)
* AN EXTRA BATTERY. Probably the most important thing to get. Though depending on your camera, it may not be an issue. The D7500 I haven't managed to do more damage than 50% battery life after 1000 shots and generous use of the back screen for review.
* Consider a cheap $40 camera bag. Mine's been convenient, though it's too small to carry more than a few extras other than the camera and two lenses. Should tide you over. Or get a bag you can pad appropriately. Honestly, something that doesn't look like a camera bag is a good idea here. A diaper bag would probably be ideal, no joke.
* A hot shoe cover if your camera has a hot shoe.
Things to avoid:
* My desktop mini-tripod for $15 was a waste of money. It couldn't even hold the damned camera still. I wouldn't bother with one of those unless it's the $50 proper aluminum kind.
* Don't bother with a tripod at all unless you're going to do long exposure shots, focus stacking, or HDR stacking. It's heavy, bulky, and with modern image stabilization not needed except in niche use cases. I've had better success doing HDR post-processing on a single exposure than stacking them (since the clouds are moving, the wind is blowing the leaves around, etc., all of which causes grief when stacking). But maybe I just needed to be shooting more quickly.
For this reason, if you get a camera that comes with a kit lens, that would likely be a telephoto, meaning you can zoom with it. This is a useful lens for practicing with a zoom, but I would highly recommend you get a prime lens, which means it has one focal length and cannot be zoomed unless you physically walk.
The main reason I suggest a prime lens for new photographers is that it allows you to remove a decision roadblock. I like to make taking a photo as simple as possible, and if I have a telephoto lens on my camera, I fiddle with that more than thinking about the shutter speed or aperture. If I have a prime lens, I often set my camera mode to aperture priority and let the camera decide the shutter speed, and that puts me much more into the mindset of the composition of the photograph. To me, this is where the delight of photography can happen, but it is also a personal experience.
As the others have said, cameras can be so complicated these days. Take the complication away, and you'll find yourself clicking the shutter button more frequently. Try shooting with aperture priority mode only for a while, then add in manual focus, then a zoom lens will be way easier to tackle.
If your camera of choice has some nice JPG output, there's nothing inherently wrong with not editing your photos at all until you get the hang of the camera itself! I use Fujifilm and often find the JPG film simulation output to have an irresistible allure. I also do edit with Adobe programs, but more for when I'm going to print at a larger scale.
The world of photography can be completely overwhelming - don't let that turn you off! Start with whatever makes you want to go out and hit the shutter button as often as you can. As one of my favorite YouTube photographer says, shoot until the memory card is full and your battery is empty! Have fun!
Here's my own journey since I started my H/A thread a month ago. I'm including it because it might be entertaining and an example of how one rank newbie has started to grapple with this complicated piece of machinery. Also, please learn how to use your exposure meter sooner than I did. Holy crap that was silly to rely on looking at the photo on the camera to see if it was under or over-exposed. And I did it for such a long, long time.
For the most part I'm still not making sufficient use of the aperture settings. I'm largely shooting wide open by default, and that's not really a great idea except in low light conditions for the lens. There's still a zillion options on my camera I don't know how to use or even know about. I still am only using a tiny fraction of Affinity Photo's capabilities. It's been a learning process and I expect to keep learning. This pool is deep, and I'm still dipping my toes in after a month and 5 days dedicated to taking photographs.
A note about JPG: there's professionals that just shoot straight to jpg, use the on-camera editing, and don't bother spending the time to do major edits on their computer because they get the shot they want right there. You can do fine shooting straight to jpg. I'm finding I can recover marginal or shitty photos with raw processing, so it has been worth it for me--though it's quite time consuming. Find what works for you and makes you motivated to go out and shoot more.
I would also recommend finding out what the main functions of a camera are for and how they affect your exposure. You won't need to take multiple exposures on every shot once you know which dial to turn and why. This is why I like to eliminate all but one variable and have someone play with that for a while before moving on, i.e. start with aperture only.
This doesn't all help with research in buying your first camera Lost Ninja. The important thing is that you practice. Let the camera make a lot of decisions at first, but then try to understand why it made that choice. If it opted for a longer exposure and the shot turned out blurry, was it too dark for the shot? Was the aperture too wide? Maybe the iso needs to be higher too. It really puts a lot of work into your hands up front before you even get to the editing, which is why I also recommend not worrying about RAW editing just yet. Photoshop and Lightroom have an incredible depth that can save a photo, but you should try to get stuff that you're happy with right away! Those tools can add a delicious layer of icing on an already delicious cake.
Olympus's bodies can do this as well; I have an om-d e-m1 from 2013, and I can shoot 9fps silently for bracketing / auto-hdr / focus stacking / chasing things in motion. (the newer bodies does 60fps / 18fps with continuous AF, though AF isn't a strong point, if you want to do sports seriously then you probably want canon/nikon for the lenses)
This is fantastic advice! The more I look into this the more amazed I am at how complicated it can get, so locking in settings and removing choice while I learn sounds like a good plan!
For a prime lens, what would be the standard to start with if I’m mostly just going to start out by waking around the park or going on a hike? I’m wanting to guess a 50mm?
Also, is there anything I should know about lens compatibility so I don’t get myself in trouble later on, or buy a camera and then am unable to get a compatible lens down the road? From the other thread it sounds like Nikon lenses are all compatable, is that the case? Are there other brands that are similar, or are still easy to make sure I’m getting the right one?
Keep in mind you'll need to make sure your mount is compatible, e.g. if you buy a crop sensor Canon, you can mount both the dedicated crop sensor lenses and the much heavier and more expensive full frame lenses, but the full frame lenses will have a 1.6x crop factor. Whereas a crop sensor lens is incompatible with a full frame Canon camera.
A 50mm prime on an APS-C sensor gives you something like an 80mm focal length, which is fine for portraits, but probably not what you want for nature photography.
To quote advice given to me:
You said you're interested in landscape photography, so something with a wider frame of view would be up your alley. You might look at landscape shots that catch your interest and see if it has the lens information accompanying that. For landscape, you'll likely be using somewhat higher apertures, so having the lowest f-stop won't be as important. (F-stop is the number that indicates what your aperture is, e.g. F2, F1.2, F8). YouTube is filled with really excellent videos of people going through their lens kits and describing the benefits of each one.
A good landscape lens might be in the 15mm range, which would be quite wide. I often use a 23mm range equivalent for landscape and architecture photography, which serves my purposes quite well. For street photography or when I'm with other people, I use a 35mm equivalent lens, which has a very natural appearance to what my eyes see. When you start looking around, you can quickly get an idea of what the focal distances can do and change. Keep in mind that the higher the focal distance, say anything 60mm and up, you'll likely want to use a tripod while shooting unless the lighting is really good. A general rule of thumb is that the shutter speed should be 1/X where X is your current focal length, and without optical or in-body stabilization, above 1/60 can be easy to blur when handheld.
All that is to say, I am not opposed to getting a zoom lens, and I have one I really like using. My favorite prime lens is within that zoom lens' range, but I more frequently have only the prime lens with me because as I walk around with just that lens, I can start putting the composition of the photograph together in my mind's eye before I raise the camera to my eye. You get used to it being fixed, and it becomes a full-body activity. It certainly isn't for everyone, but it sets my digital camera photography apart from my phone camera shots.
Though I think I also want to test out a Canon Rebel since it was mentioned they may have a better UI for a beginner. Is it relatively easy if I mostly see myself getting new lenses to make sure I get one that will work? Do they have a habit of dropping lens support/comparability for a style of camera.
Once you feel you have pushed your phone to its limits, then a camera would make sense. By then you'll also have a better idea of what you need/want. For example, I know I can't for the life of me hold a 300mm steady at 1/300, so image stabilization became a must. Or, I found myself shooting in natural/available light a lot, so sharpness when wide open combined with high ISO performance became important.
If you're intent on buying a camera, keep in mind you're not buying the camera. You're buying the system. Go to a photo store if you have one by you, and play around with the cameras. Then buy the one that fits into your hand most naturally. Half of why I'm a Pentax person is that the camera layout made sense to me (Pentax is all knobs, dials, and wheels, compared to the mostly menu driven system in other brands. It drives all of my friends crazy.)
Otherwise, I will continue to preach something like a Sony RX100, whichever the current generation is. Or, a micro 4/3 system, most of the benefits of DSLR, with some drawbacks in high ISO performance which may not be an issue depending on your photo preferences. You don't NEED an APSC/FF DSLR to take good photos. You only need a DSLR when you need large sensor size and flexibility in changing lenses.
So if you can strip all the other UI stuff away, those are the things that make the shot, really. I find my phone really difficult to use to adjust those in the way that I want, but that's probably because I'm a stickler for my mechanical dials. I like feeling the full click of an aperture or shutter stop, so I know full well what I've changed without needing to look at the dial or often the UI to know what I changed.
I also agree that going straight to buying a camera without knowing what it does can be a huge hurdle. If there is any way to borrow, rent, or buy a real cheap one on craigslist, I might recommend that as a first step. Probably because I'm just not that good at using my phone, but I wouldn't use it as if it were a full camera. Making the distinction between what they are really changes the approach.
I'm using a Nikon D3300, which the 3500 is a successor to. I'm not sure how much the UI varies between the two, but I haven't had that much trouble with the software. This is definitely the part where getting the camera in your hands is important. If you don't have a camera store near you, go to a Best Buy, they should have a dozen models or so on display.
This is what I’m thinking I’ll do next. I’ve only been able to find one local camera shop but they don’t appear to have a website or anything. Will probably scope them out and go to Best Buy if all else fails.
Local Best Buy has them for cheaper than Amazon, so will try to see if I can play with one first. Also found a local camera shop I was going to check out before I was ready to buy as well.
Lastly, I found a place that does both classes and photo excursions. Most of their things appear to be on the south side of Charlotte which is a bit of a drive for me just because traffic just north of the city (where I am) is terrible, but I could probably do one of the newbie boot camp style classes that are like a Saturday day long class once I’m ready.
As the best camera is the one you have with you, whatever that may be, I'm just going to use either my phone camera (LG V30, which has a pretty solid manual mode) or my point-and-shoot (Canon Ixus 165 I was given a few years ago, which mostly serves as a "when I need some optical zoom" device) for now; I'd rather get better results with them before I think about making the leap to anything bigger. Also I'm not looking for live classes or anything for now. So any suggestions of just websites or blogs etc to go to start learning the basics of putting a shot together would be useful and appreciated!
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(spoiling to avoid wall-of-text overshadowing people that know what they're talking about)
So searching for things like lighting, contrast, focus, or landscape, portrait, etc. photography. It all helps--at least for where I'm at.
Something else that has helped is every so often going out with someone else who's taking pictures. They see the world differently and often what I find myself doing is copying their shot and then figuring out why they did it that way. Helps when that person is a better photographer than you!
Finally, the advice of just get out and shoot is good. I'll reiterate that my percentage of photos I like is around 1%. But if I'm taking several thousand photos, I'll end up with 20 I like, and maybe another 20-40 that look okay (and the rest I'll cull at some point). I'm finding it to be a bit of a numbers game where I'm varying aperture and exposure times for the same shot just to make sure that if the composition is right, the exposure is right too. Each "shot" for me is more like 10-20 shots as I vary the parameters. Or possibly more like 100 if I'm trying to catch something dynamic, like a wave break. Shoot lots and figure out what worked and what didn't, then use that to learn for next time.
edit: Last time out I got 15 good photos out of 1500 taken. 1% success rate. 2nd from last time out I ended up with 1800 photos, 9 of which I really like. I haven't bothered going through for the okay photos. That's 0.5%. I'm still happy with the results though: it makes me happy to look at those photos.
If you're not into classes, 770 is the Dewey class for photography, and I suggest browsing at your local library. This site has links to other blogs that you might find useful-- one is for lighting.
I remember a tip from a professional photographer that I read once - and this was back in the days of film, long before digital - that he would get maybe one or two shots he thought were actually decent for every roll of film he used. That always stuck with me.
With the sheer amount of shots we can take now, it doesn't surprise me that the ratio would shift a bit. Obviously we had to be slightly more discerning in the film era as each click of the shutter had a quantifiable cost attached to it, but with digital we can take a relatively massive number of shots to pick the cream of the crop from.
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Anyway, here is a cool sunset I got a shot of about a month ago (before I learned how to do better today). Still think it looks pretty cool though.
My class covered their importance, but not really how to select the correct one.
This is the one I’m looking at: https://www.adorama.com/nksb500u.html
I would mostly be looking to use it with a 35mm prime, 18-55mm kit lens, and a 70-300mm zoom (this will probably be the one I use it the most with for portraiture and pics of individuals at events (probably can’t call it a candid when I want to use a giant flash).
Would this work for my needs, the listed lens coverage, and not fully understanding that, is what I think is throwing me off?
The reason I ask is that you might be better off not getting a flash yet until you practice natural lighting when it is available and finding out how the sun is working for or against you. When you take a photo you really like, study what the light was like at that moment - is the sun direct/indirect, is there a reflection from a nearby object, are other lights nearby creating shadows on the subject? Most portrait flash and lighting won't come from the camera body, as that creates strange shadows; instead they use diffusers, reflectors, and off body flash to create the specific lighting they want for that session.
It could be that I'm way off, but I'm biased because I only use a flash if I want my end-result to look like a disposable camera, and I don't do any studio portrait work. I do like getting that disposable look sometimes, but in most other shooting scenarios, either the natural light is adequate, or I change the style of shot to accommodate the atmosphere i.e. increase iso, lean in to the noise, and go for a grainy night shot.
They have a separate course on flash photography that I’ll probably end up taking at some point as well, just looking for one that will align with the lenses I’ll be using for the time being.